PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's Spirit rover rolled off its landing platform and onto the surface of Mars early Thursday, placing its six wheels on solid ground for the first time since the unmanned robot bounced down on the Red Planet nearly two weeks ago."Mars now is our sandbox," said Charles Elachi, director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "We are ready to play and learn."Pictures beamed from Spirit showed the now-abandoned lander with tire tracks leading away from it.The rollout had been delayed for a couple of days because Spirit's primary path off the platform was blocked by partially deflated airbags — the airbags that cushioned the spacecraft's bouncing touchdown in Gusev Crater on Jan. 3. Engineers had to have the rover turn 115 degrees on its 16-inch-high (40-centimeter-high) platform to set the stage for Thursday's roll down a secondary ramp, which they considered the mission's riskiest maneuver.The team at JPL sent the order to Spirit to get moving at around 3:21 a.m. ET, playing the theme from "Rawhide" ("Rolling, rolling, rolling ...") to get in the mood. Less than two hours later, the rover sent confirmation it had sucessfully maneuvered down the ramp and onto the Martian soil."This is a big relief. We are on Mars. Spirit has landed,” said Rob Manning, manager of the entry, descent and landing portion of the mission. “Our wheels are finally dirty.”As new images streamed across the screens at JPL, the group of engineers and scientists cheered and hugged each other.
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